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Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by tathougies on Monday March 18, 2019 @04:32PM (#19424962)
> However, for the average person, a dogmatic belief in the scientific method would be a huge step up over religion.

But the scientific method is based on the idea of an unchanging God / reality. Without that fundamental belief, theres no point in determining how physics behaves in an experiment, because if everything happens at the whims of anthropomorphic gods, then there is no reason to expect the same experiment will produce similar results.

Thus, I don't really see the huge step up, especially given the inhumanity science has sometimes promulgated, and for which it frankly gets a free pass.

Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by WalterBright on Monday March 18, 2019 @04:50PM (#19425133)
The scientific method produces predictable, reproducible results, and other philosophies do not. Therefore, it's more useful.
Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by effie on Monday March 18, 2019 @07:33PM (#19426446)
Determinism is an idea of physics based on unchanging God/reality, but science is more general. Science can work without determinism, there are probabilistic / statistical methods, or hypotheses of effective physical laws changing in time. In quantum experiments, things happen at whims of nature and some such experiments do not produce similar results when repeated, but look random.
Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by mensetmanusman on Monday March 18, 2019 @08:29PM (#19426852)
‘Randomness’ with perfectly defined statistics and distributions is fascinating...